


Interlude: Ultimatum

by angel_deux



Series: Won't You Let Us Wander [7]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Brief mentions of torture, Draven gets more antagonistic while continuing to be understandable, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Fix-It, Gaslighting, Minor Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, Slow Burn, This Is Not The Happy Ending You're Looking For, remember this is all temporary, the continued misadventures of Rogue One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 09:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9812795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: After what transpired on the (only technically sanctioned) rescue mission undertaken by Rogue One, Draven gives Jyn an ultimatum regarding her place within the Rebellion.





	

**Author's Note:**

> All right kiddos, I'm back with another angsty mess. I tagged this with emotional manipulation and gaslighting just in case, but I don't think it's too severe in this Interlude. However, it WILL be more severe in the following mission, so just a heads up on that. 
> 
> Thank you for your patience with my anxiety-fueled direction change of this story. I've merged two plotlines into one here, taking a little steam off the angst train, and I've entirely rewritten my outline so I'm feeling more confident about it! And thank you so much for all your encouragement and personal stories and kind words. Feedback always means so much, but it was on a whole other level for the last chapter, and I can't thank you enough!

Jyn spends most of the next two days in a bacta tank. She only finds this out much later. There isn’t time to ask at first.

Her stomach wounds, the twin blaster burns, are severe. They will scar. She finds this out later, as well. Maybe a longer treatment would have done her some good, but the Rebellion can’t spare bacta on scar tissue, and anyway, she’s left Yavin far behind before she’s even considered what it might look like under the bandages.

By the time she wakes up, Cassian has already been released from medical. This, she finds out immediately, because his head is resting on the side of her bed, pillowed on his arms. He’s slumped over in his chair, and it looks horribly uncomfortable, but he’s sleeping easily enough, his hand reached out across her abdomen, fingers lightly curled against the blanket.

She doesn’t wake him right away. She studies him, catalogues a new scar under his eye. Small, but she sees it, her fingers twitching to move towards it, though she stops herself. She sees the pain still written in the lines on his face, even in sleep. It doesn’t go away quickly, she knows. Bacta can’t heal the worst of it. But then, Cassian is strong, and he has always been a little bit in pain since she’s met him.

She longs to brush his hair away from his eyes, longs to trace her fingertips over his skin, but instead she murmurs, “Cassian,” knowing that he’ll wake.

He does, years of sleeping light making him sensitive to even the slightest shifts around him, and he sits up, withdrawing the warmth of his hand, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“Hi,” he says, and she laughs, and it turns to a quiet cough halfway through. Cassian helps her slide back, sit up a little so she can drink from the water by her bedside that he presses into her hands. “How do you feel?”

“Tired,” Jyn admits. Cassian nods.

“They said you might be shaky when you first woke up. It will wear off fast.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Cassian answers, and Jyn knows that the slight hesitation means that the physical wounds are healed, but _okay_ is another matter. She reaches out for him, hand sliding across the pristine bedspread and contacting his elbow, braced on the bed beside her. She curls her fingers around his arm. It feels like a possessive gesture. She thinks it might _be_ a possessive gesture.

“You might’ve heard I’ve been to a few Imperial prisons myself,” she says. She tries to keep her voice light, but there’s a tremble to it all the same. “I know how it can linger.”

Cassian nods again, and he covers her hand with his own.

“You need rest,” he says, reluctantly. “But I just...I needed...I mean, you probably don’t...but…”

Sighing, he runs his hands through his hair, looking frustrated, scared, uncertain. The tightness in Jyn’s chest increases.

“It’s okay,” she tells him.

“I wanted to be sure you weren’t alone. When you woke up.”

Jyn doesn’t try very hard to hide her smile at that, and Cassian flushes, but only a little. He braces himself to say something else. More apology. More explanation. More gratitude. She isn’t sure.

But the door slides open, and K-2SO looms there.

“Oh good. You’re awake,” he says, the sarcasm indicating that it’s Jyn and not Cassian he’s speaking to.

“You’re welcome for the rescue,” Jyn says, and K-2SO’s circuits whir briefly as he tries to find objection to that.

“What do you need, K?” Cassian asks.

“General Draven wishes to speak with you. He said to meet him in the war room. He said it’s important.”

“I have to assume it’s to offer an apology,” Jyn drawls, which has Cassian snorting a bit before he stands to go.

“It _must_ be,” he agrees, with the same bitterness that tells her he knows it’s probably not. “I’ll be back after?” Asking her permission. She nods. “Um. And we can talk.”

“Or try to, anyway,” Jyn points out, and Cassian gives another little smile at that. He rests his hand briefly on top of her head before he goes, before he finally pulls away, heads for the door. He gives her one last smile over his shoulder, and Jyn smiles back. And then she’s left alone.

Later, they’ll talk. Maybe have better luck in finding the words to express their shared fears, their shared uncertainties about what to expect from each other. Or maybe they won’t. Maybe it will be just as frustrating, just as elusive, just as impossible. But he’s here now. And he’s safe, and she’s safe, and it feels like it’s been a long time since all of that was true at the same time.

Which is why it’s so cruel, so cosmically unfair, for General Draven to enter the room when he does.

“You just missed him,” she says, coolly as ever. She understands General Draven’s position, and she knows how precarious and difficult a position it is. She even respects it. But this is a man who ordered her father killed, who was so tenacious to see it done that he ordered a bombing run on an Imperial facility. And he sent an assassin after Cassian, sent a message to Jyn and their friends that Cassian was dead already. Things that were understandable if you were an entirely pragmatic, rational creature, or were so dedicated to the larger cause that you were willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to do it. But Jyn isn’t. Jyn doesn’t think she should be expected to be.

She thinks that Draven probably would have liked Saw, if he hadn’t so thoroughly convinced himself along the way that there is a meritorious difference between doing terrible things in the shadows in service of the greater good and doing those same terrible things in the open.

Draven looks at her for a long moment. He looks oddly uncertain, as if he’d wandered into this room by accident or found himself needing to gain courage to speak. But finally he says, “I’m not here for him. I’m here for you.” He closes the door, presses the panel beside it in order to lock it, and Jyn feels a momentary spike of fear.

But no, that’s not quite right. She can’t imagine Draven being quite so senselessly bold. No, he’s not here to kill her, but a terror seizes on her anyway, as if she has some of Chirrut’s vague sense of what is to come. Sending K-2SO to lead Cassian away, to make certain that he was out of the room before he came here to speak to her? It’s not a move that inspires much confidence.

“What?” she asks, because he has stared at her a little too long. He sighs, removing a datapad from within his jacket, moving across the room towards her.

“You may not believe this, and that’s okay. But this isn’t personal.”

“Off to a fantastic start,” Jyn replies, pretending not to feel even more terrified by those words, by the genuine _regret_ she hears in his voice.

“I need you to get your things and go. Captain Solo will take you somewhere far from here, and you will go back to doing whatever it is you did before the Empire brought you to Wobani.”

A beat, and she stares him down as best she can from her bed.

“You’re joking.”

“You think I’m likely to spend much time pranking injured Rebellion heroes?”

“Explain, then.”

“Do I need to? You look at me as if you understand already. But if you _insist:_ you killed one of the best men in my division.”

Jyn bites down on an urge to say something defensive, something angry. She watches Draven for a moment, letting the words sink in, letting him watch her. He has the same blank face Cassian has cultivated, but she doesn’t have the benefit of knowing Draven the way she knows her captain. Still, she thinks she can understand him. Even now, when she could kill him for this, she understands him.

“You were going to have him killed,” she says. The _him_ can be unspoken here. They both know she isn’t talking about Thane.

“Yes. And I would have been sorry to lose him. But that’s how it works.”

“Then you could have _me_ killed, too. Couldn’t you?”

Draven’s eyebrow twitches, just a little.

“I could,” he agrees. Unspoken, implied: _I won’t. Not unless you force my hand._

“The Council. You’re thinking you’ll explain this away?”

“It won’t be the first time I’ve given them a name and told them a good man wasn’t coming home.” Jyn feels the thud of blaster bolts into her stomach, feels blood-slick hands scrabbling at her. _A good man_. “And it won’t be the first time someone couldn’t quite handle the war anymore. Decided to leave on a whim.”

He’s looking at her intently, trying to read her. Her lip curls up in an expression that’s part sneer, part snarl.

“You could explain it away. Hide my involvement. Cassian would lie for me.”

“Yes. All true.”

“But you won’t.”

“But I won’t.”

They stare at each other for a while longer. She’s trembling with- with something. She’s not sure. Fear? Anger? Disgust? Uncertainty? Because she’s sure that no matter what she says, Draven will have some answer for it. No matter what words she speaks, Draven will shoot them down. Draven does not need her gone. Draven does not find himself in an impossible-to-explain position. No, Draven simply thinks it would be better for everyone if she _was_ gone. And in a way, he’s right. It would certainly make it easier for _him_.

“Then I tell them everything myself. Tell them what Thane was sent to that Star Destroyer to _do_. Leia didn’t know. I doubt Mon Mothma did, either, considering your official transmission: Captain Andor, KIA. Very nice, by the way. A touching tribute to one of your best men.”

That strikes something in him, though she isn’t sure what it is. He leans back in his seat, eyes narrowing. She thinks it may be the accusation of uncaring. Because, no. She understands. She can see it, even if he remains as infuriatingly blank as ever. She can see that the war eats away at him the way it’s been eating away at Cassian. Draven has just learned to accept the moral decay. His face betrays none of the haunted suffering she sees peeking out more and more daily from behind Cassian’s best efforts to keep it hidden. Though maybe that, too, is a lie. Maybe the real difference is that Draven has just become an utter expert at hiding it.

“You could do that,” Draven admits, finally. “Cause quite a stir, too. I provide what they need me to provide, so they’re willing to overlook a lot of the questions that might come up. But if you were to expose _that_ , well, the whole division would be under question. They would feel obligated to ask more than I’d want to answer. My men have done some horrible things in service of the Rebellion. Captain Andor, especially.”

Again, the trail is not hard to follow.

“You provide results. So does he. I can’t imagine they’d have much of a problem with it. Anything to win the war, right?”

The datapad comes up. He rests it gently on her knees.

Names. Dates. Images. Brief descriptions. She refuses to touch it, so Draven leans forward in his chair and does it for her, scrolling through, the files pausing long enough for her to take them in before he moves on to the next one. She watches for a while, impassive, but her resolve crumbles quickly.

The birthdate of one of the names does it. So _young_.

“Stop,” she says, but Draven shakes his head.

“No. These actions, these _crimes_ , they were necessary. Captain Andor carried out his duty not because he is a cruel, unfeeling man, and not because _I_ am, whatever you may think of me at this moment. Captain Andor did his duty because these moments saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Some of them saved _billions_. It wasn’t as simple as picking you up out of prison and shoving you into a U-Wing, Erso. There were rumors to track down. Trails to follow. Informants to interview. Targets to eliminate. And he did it because he knows the cost. One man is not worth anything against billions. So if Cassian Andor has to collapse under the weight of what he’s done, then at least he’s _done_ it.”

He keeps scrolling. Jyn keeps _reading_. She can’t stop herself.

“You’re a monster,” she decides, but she says it dispassionately. There’s no real feeling behind it. Because he’s right, isn’t he? She _hates_ him now, as he knew she would, but he’s right. One life against billions. There’s no competition. That’s why they could justify blowing up the Death Star and all its inhabitants. _Us or them_. The greater good.

( _But it’s Cassian_ , whispers a quiet voice inside her mind. It’s _Cassian_ collapsing under the weight of this. Cassian who killed the man in the white cape, who came back from the dead to save her, who curled his arm around her and pulled it tighter when he was asleep. Cassian who kissed her, who left her, who apologized, who told her _welcome home_ and meant it.)

“Maybe,” Draven admits, sitting back, leaving the datapad open to a file that Jyn tries very hard to stop reading. She knows it isn’t a coincidence that Draven has left it on a file that contains the word _tortured_. That contains a description of the information Cassian was _able to extract_. A file that will make her think of him huddled against the wall on the Afflictor, aching and lost. Will make her wonder how he would look if he was the man behind the pain. “But if I’m a monster, I’m the only reason you’re alive to feel it. I’m the only reason _any_ of us are here. Same as you, Erso. Same as Captain Andor. Without us, without all of us, this moon, this Rebellion, would be ash.”

“Hasn’t he done enough?” Jyn asks, tearing her eyes away from the datapad. “You can’t just- just _use_ him until he burns out. Until there’s nothing left of him.”

“Do you really think that he will be ever satisfied if he’s giving less than his whole self to the Rebellion?”

He doesn’t mean to sound cruel, Jyn can tell. He’s earnest, asking her to think about it, asking her to reconsider.

She doesn’t know if he’s very good at this or if he’s just aware he doesn’t have to try very hard to make her see the truth.

Because he’s right. He’s _right_.

“He deserves a choice.”

“If this was about what he deserves, about what any of you deserve, this would be a very different conversation. But it has never been about that.”

“It is for me,” Jyn points out, her voice ragged, breaking. Harsh. Draven looks at her so pointedly and for so long that she understands his meaning without him having to say it. But he does anyway.

“That’s why I’m here,” he says. “You’re a hero, Erso. I don’t dispute that. What you and Captain Andor and the others did was beyond what anyone could have expected. It was disobedient, it was reckless, it was a monumentally stupid plan. If you weren’t successful, we’d all be talking about you a little differently. But you succeeded, and so here we are. But since Scarif, your team has been nothing but trouble for me. He was one of my most effective agents, and now he’s tied down by his insistence on managing a foolish team of outsiders. The Rebellion needs to stay sharp. It needs to keep working the way it does. I want Captain Andor back, and I want you gone.”

It’s simple. _Not personal_. That’s what makes her feel panicked, indecisive, because it’s so _logical_ , and she hates that she has no rejoinder that will land with him. She could throw a tantrum. Demand that he leave. She could go to Leia _right now_ and tell the princess everything.

“If I refuse to leave, if I tell them what you’ve tried to do, you lose Cassian anyway. If they’re going to be so bothered by what you’ve had him do, they’ll shut you down.”

“Doubtful. And they won’t shut Cassian down, either. Like you said: results. But they’ll know. And they’ll know who told them. And so will he. I won’t lose anything, Erso. Regard from Mon Mothma and the princess, maybe, but they don’t hold me very highly anyway. The only one who’ll lose anything is you. They’ll have to put you on trial for Thane’s death. Cassian will have to answer for far more. Their council will demand it. And whether you’re found guilty or not, whether _he_ is found guilty or not…” He trails off, pointed again. Leading her.

_Things won’t be the same. They won’t trust you._ He _won’t trust you. They will resent you for shattering the illusion. You will no longer be welcome by any of them. And Cassian will hate you for what you’ve done._

Jyn feels pressure welling up in her chest. Pressure she thought had long left her, that hasn’t been around lately. The need to run and _keep_ running. And Draven is offering her an out. No: he’s demanding it.

“Cassian won’t believe that I’ve just left,” Jyn tries, because it’s the only thing she can think of to say. Draven actually looks a little sympathetic, which is the worst part. She can _believe_ that it isn’t personal.

“He’s been expecting you to run every day since you got here,” he says, and that might just be the worst truth of it all.

* * *

She’s just finishing typing the message into her datapad, crouched next to her bed like a criminal, pretending to tie her boot as her fingers fly over the keys, when Bodhi enters her room. And he knows instantly, knows immediately, because he looks ready to fight, ready to argue. Maybe he saw Draven leaving and put it together. Or maybe he, like Chirrut, has a sense for her distress.

“What are you doing?” he asks, and Jyn turns her back to him briefly, under the guise of picking her small pack off the floor, so she can close her eyes against the hurt in his voice. Most of her things are still on the Falcon. Convenient. She has no doubt that Draven planned this so she would be able to leave as quickly, as smoothly as possible.

“What’s it look like?” she asks, afraid to turn around and look at him. Bodhi is so difficult to lie to. He’s so difficult to hurt.

“Why are you leaving?” he asks.

“I can’t…Bodhi, stop.”

He’s tugging at her arm, trying to get her to look at him.

“Jyn, what…”

She glances, as _un_ obviously as she can, to the other side of the medbay, where an innocuous-looking Rebellion soldier is leaning up against the far wall, pretending to study his datapad.

“I’ve overstayed my welcome,” she says, speaking carefully, looking Bodhi in the eye. For all he can be an awkward mess sometimes, he’s also perceptive, and his voice drops, his eyes never leaving hers.

“Did someone say something to you?”

“No one had to tell me anything, Bodhi. I just can’t stay here, all right?”

Bodhi keeps looking at her, and he’s chewing on his lower lip, trying to derive meaning.

“Is this because of what they were going to do to Cassian? Because I…”

“Yes,” she says, seizing on that. “Because they were going to leave him to die without helping him. I can’t do it anymore. Do you understand?”

Now he knows for sure that something’s wrong, that they can’t speak freely. She meant for it to put him at ease, but she doesn’t think she was successful. His eyes are wider, more panicked, less understanding.

“When?” he asks.

“Right now,” she replies.

“Jyn, you can’t…I don’t…”

He takes her arm like he needs to feel that she’s still here, at least for now. She can see the indecision in his face that she herself feels. The tears, too, gathering behind his eyes, and she’s trying to be strong, but she can’t be strong with him. Every time he looks at her like that, every time she’s reminded that he was her father’s friend, that he is here for her, that he _cares_ , she can’t be strong. She throws her arms around him, hugging him tight, relieved when he hugs her back.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, even though she wants to tell him everything. “It won’t be for long. I promise.” She _hopes_. “Ask Cassian, all right? Ask him why I’m leaving.”

Bodhi just squeezes her more tightly.

“Don’t go,” he says into her shoulder, his face pressed against her, and the tightness of his hug almost physically squeezes a sob out of her.

_I have to,_ she wants to say.

Instead she says, again, “I’m sorry.”

“At least let me come with you. I’m supposed to…I’m supposed to protect you.”

It’s tempting. So tempting to say yes, to take Bodhi away from this, from Draven, from whatever will come of the team now that Draven has been bold enough to threaten her into running away. It’s tempting to protect Bodhi from having to make the difficult decision she’s making now. But she can’t. This will be temporary. She tells herself this, over and over again, even as she fears it’s not true. It will be temporary, but she can’t risk him too. Just in case.

“I can’t. You wanted to do right by yourself, right? Follow what was in your heart. I can’t let you come with me. The Rebellion needs you, and you need them.”

“I need _you_ ,” Bodhi insists. “We all do.”

Jyn just squeezes him tightly and pulls back.

“You’ll be all right, I promise. Here. I have something for you.”

She kept it with her through everything. Through hunger and war and prison. But now she takes the Kyber crystal from around her neck and she passes it over Bodhi’s head as the older man looks at her, stunned.

“I can’t take this,” he says, even not knowing the full story behind it, even not knowing the scattered, incomplete memory of Lyra Erso’s last moments with her daughter. He knows what this means to Jyn. And nothing has ever felt so right.

“It protected me for years,” she says, tears in her voice, but only a little. _Temporary,_ her mind hisses. “At least, that’s what I like to think. I don’t know if there’s any real magic to it. But my mother gave it to me because she loved me and she wanted me to be safe. Even if there’s nothing real to it, at least I could hold it and remember that. And now you can do the same. Keep it safe for me, Bodhi.” _Until I come back_ is unspoken. _I hope I come back_ even more so.

* * *

Baze and Chirrut don’t try to talk her out of it. Baze simply approaches her in the hallway and hugs her tight, and Chirrut waits behind him for his turn.

“I don’t know why you are doing this,” he says. “But I sense that you do not want to go.”

“Then you also sense that I _need_ to go,” Jyn says quietly, Draven’s lackey too close behind her, and Chirrut smiles sadly.

“Little star, I sense a lot of pain. Right here.” He taps her chest, over her heart. “Not easily fixed. And it will break the Captain’s spirit, too.”

“I don’t need to hear that,” she says, and Chirrut sighs.

“No. I think you already know it. Which must mean you have a powerful reason for leaving.”

Jyn only sighs, and Chirrut takes her hand with another mournful look.

“I’m sorry,” she says to them both. It’s all she can think of to say, with the watchful eyes so close behind. Baze sees the soldier, and she would wager that Chirrut understands what the unfamiliar presence means. But still, there is so much she would say to them. Instead, she hugs Chirrut desperately, arms around him, and she slips her datapad into the inner pocket of his robe.

She didn’t survive for years on her own without learning a few tricks. And Draven’s bodyguard, Draven’s insurance that she doesn’t say anything to anyone while he keeps Cassian away from her (so he can later _use_ this, she knows, to drive Cassian deeper, and the thought draws a snarl to her face), he doesn’t see a thing.

“Tell Cassian…” she starts, knowing very well that she isn’t allowed to ask Chirrut to tell Cassian anything. She can almost feel the guard tensing up behind her. “No, never mind.”

But Chirrut has received the message. Probably he didn’t even need to be told who the datapad was _for_.

“I know, Jyn,” he says, and he squeezes her hands before releasing her. “Remember what I told you when we first met?”

“The strongest stars have hearts of Kyber,” Jyn repeats. She doesn’t have to tell him, she doesn’t think, how often that moment runs through her mind. How often she thinks of it.

“Try not to forget that, little star. Try to remember how strong you are.”

“I wish I were just a bit stronger,” Jyn says. If she were stronger, she wouldn’t need this charade. She wouldn’t need to play by the rules of this ultimatum for even a moment. If she was strong enough, she would _do_ something about it.

“You will come to realize your strength on this journey. I sense it.”

“You could have sensed _this_ coming,” Baze grumbles. Angry, and Jyn doesn’t blame him.

“I’m sorry,” she says again.

* * *

K-2SO and Bodhi are together, Bodhi clutching the Kyber crystal around his neck, whispering to the droid, who blocks the way, imposing. Bodhi’s eyes go over Jyn’s shoulder to the soldier behind her, and now he looks even more certain that he understands what’s going on, though he’s good and doesn’t say anything.

“Where are you going?” the droid asks, stepping close to her, so she has to crane her neck up to look at him.

“I’m leaving. Thought you, at least, wouldn’t give me grief about this decision.”

“I’ve already reevaluated you once. Favorable impact on Cassian’s odds of survival. I cannot allow you to leave.”

“Well, I don’t want to stay. So if you’ll excuse me…”

She tries to brush past him, but K-2SO turns, looks at her, sticks out his hand to block her from going any farther.

“You’re lying,” he says. Blunt, almost disbelieving. “Why are you lying? The odds of you choosing to leave on your own are…well. I don’t need to tell you, do you?”

“You once told me there was an eighty-nine percent chance, do you remember?” There’s a line connecting that number to Cassian. A line connecting that number to her. She prays that he actually understands and doesn’t say something stupid. His circuits whir, and he considers.

“Eighty nine percent,” he repeats. Bodhi looks at her, and she nods. Brushes past K-2SO, who seems to still be thinking about it.

* * *

The last person who corners her actually demands an apology, then seems disappointed when she gives it.

“That’s it? No defense, no explanation?”

Leia sighs, throws up her hands.

“I need to go,” Jyn says simply.

“Your team. They know you’re leaving?”

“I’ve said my goodbyes.”

“You keep running, and you’re going to run out of places to run to,” Leia says, and Jyn has a feeling those are words she’s been saving up for someone else.

“Pretty sure I already have,” she replies.

* * *

Draven was supposed to keep him away, but Jyn is somehow less than surprised that he couldn’t even manage _that_. Cassian was supposed to emerge from a suspiciously long meeting to find his team fractured and Jyn gone less than an hour after he woke up in the medbay to find her smiling at him. He was supposed to find Chirrut, take the datapad. Read the message that she managed to tap into it without her shadow seeing: _Draven did this. Have to leave home for now. Will contact and explain. I’m sorry. I don’t want this but it isn’t my choice to make. Don’t trust Draven. I’m sorry._

But when she enters the hanger, alone, her teammates all having said their part and left her to her fate, confused and hurt and probably angry, too, she spots the Falcon sitting just outside, and she spots Han standing with his arms folded as Cassian speaks to him, the spy’s entire frame trembling with fury.

And Jyn freezes, actually looks around for Draven to help, but he isn’t here. And then Han, the big oaf, has to look past Cassian to look at her, and Cassian turns and sees her, and then he’s stalking toward her, and he’s favoring his bad leg, limping, and Jyn can’t do this. Bad enough to have to leave without saying goodbye. Now she’s got to lie to his face about it, and he looks…

“What is this?” he asks. She hasn’t seen him this angry, this hurt, since she called him a Stormtrooper after Eadu, and that swollen feeling in her chest blooms into something heavy and painful in her gut.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she says, keeping her head up, refusing to back down only because there’s a fire in her heart reminding her that this is for _him_. Reminding her that the Rebel soldier a few feet behind her will tell Draven everything she says to him. Will negate all of this hurt and pain she’s causing, all of this temporary fracturing she’s doing. She’s begging him to understand with his eyes. Begging him to notice the man behind her. And he _does_. She sees the way his eyes flicker over to him. Cassian is a spy, and a good one, and surely he notices one of Draven’s tricks.

But his expression doesn’t look any less lost. Less broken.

“Anything,” he says. “Say _anything_ ”, and she swallows the explanation, the excuse, that rises up in her.

Cassian has never known a life outside the Rebellion. He has built a home for himself here, even as it sucks him dry of every last bit of humanity he can cling to. He abhors what he’s done, and the person he has become because of it, and now she knows a little bit of why. What Draven showed her doesn’t make her hate him. It doesn’t make her resent him, or think he’s irredeemable. Part of her is sure that that was Draven’s intention, that the man was actually trying to make this easier for her, but it didn’t work. Cassian told her that day, before leaving for Scarif, in this very hanger. He told her that he needed absolution. Not in so many words, but she had understood that. She had not wanted that responsibility. She knew she was unequal to giving it to him.

And now she _is_. It’s her turn to do something abhorrent, something painful, because she knows that in the end, it’s for the better. It’s for the greater good.

Looking up at his shattered expression, she needs to remind herself. Leaving now will keep Draven off her, will let Cassian decide what to do, will let him make the choice. She understands that there’s a cruelty to it, even as she thinks she’s doing the right thing. Draven’s giving her an ultimatum, and she’s turning right around and passing the responsibility off to Cassian. But if he ever tried to make a decision like this for her, she knows she would be furious, and she would resent him, and she would be right for it. And with this, she can protect him for a little while longer, until he knows what he wants. Until he can figure out a way to talk Draven out of it.

Or, she thinks, with a stab of surprising fear, he _won’t_ figure out a way.

Is the message enough? _I don’t want this_. _I’m sorry._

He won’t endure the shame of being exposed as a killer. He won’t endure the humiliation of having Mon Mothma and Princess Leia, two of his biggest supporters, find out what he’s done. These are all things she’s saving him from. So why is it _so_ hard?

_Anything. Say anything._

“I have to go,” she says, trying to go around him, but he blocks her way, holding out his hands.

“Jyn, please. Just...I’m sorry. I’ve been…I know it’s unfair. I know that I need to figure out…”

“Goodbye, Cassian,” she says firmly, trying to get around him again. This time he takes her arm, and he’s looming close.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks. “What did I do?”

“Maybe it isn’t about you,” she says, but that sounds like a lie even to her. Cassian’s brow furrows, and she knows he hears it.

She can’t imagine what a man as self-loathing as Cassian can come up with if there’s a lack of real information available.

“Jyn,” he murmurs, and her vision is blurring with tears, and she has to leave. She can see Han beyond them, looking immensely uncomfortable. She wonders if he knows why this is happening. She wonders if everyone she’s come to like in this Rebellion thinks she’s leaving them behind of her own power. Hurting Cassian like this because she wants to. “If you tell me, I can try to fix it. Don’t just leave without letting me _try_.”

“This isn’t my home,” she says, a desperate effort. _Leaving home for now,_ in her message. He’ll remember, later, when he gets the chance to read it. He’ll remember, and he’ll know she said this on purpose. He _has_ to. But right now, she has to leave, and she hates that she knows exactly what to say to make him let her go. This is what she’s good at. What she’s _always_ been good at. Lashing out. Anger and helplessness swelling up until she can’t keep it in anymore. And it’s easy, even though she doesn’t mean it. “It’s never been my home, Cassian. You all pretend you’re better than Saw was, but you’re doing the same things. Hurting people. Killing people. For the greater good, but that doesn’t make it any less horrible. And I can’t stomach it anymore. I can’t stomach…” _you anymore_ , she almost says, but her breath hitches and she can’t do it.

She doesn’t need to, anyway. He knows what belongs after her trailed off words.  He releases her arm, and he takes a step back.

“Jyn, I...” he starts, and she wishes he would get angry and defensive, the way he did after Eadu. She wishes he would yell back at her, call her a hypocrite, wishes he would storm away. It would be so much easier on her. Instead, he looks at her and she can feel his heart breaking as he absorbs what he thinks she must feel for him. Murderer. Killer. She can’t stand to be near him. It’s the farthest thing from the truth, but it’s the truth he reads in her quivering form and her haughty chin and the unshed tears.

And it’s too much. His pain is too much. She wanted to make him angry, not look at her like _this._ She has to at least ease it. She can’t leave it like this.

“I don’t want...” she starts, all in a rush, and she’s not even sure what she’s going to tell him. Throw the whole thing away? Let Draven’s little spy hear whatever he wants? Is she going to tell him that she doesn’t want to leave? That she doesn’t want him to think that she doesn’t love him with every desperate part of her she didn’t even know existed before she met him? Is she going to tell him that if it was up to her, she would stay fighting by his side until they were both too gray to keep going or until they were obliterated together fighting for the freedom of billions?

Whatever it is, it doesn’t get past her hand squeezing his arm, her eyes locked on his. And Draven, finally arriving precisely when it is most painful for him to arrive, calls out, “Captain Andor!”

As Cassian turns to address him, Jyn ducks around him and walks, quickly and steadily, to the Falcon. She ignores the doubtful look Han is giving her. Ignores the sad purring noise Chewbacca throws her way, and she disappears into the ship.

“Let’s go,” she says, taking a seat in the main hold, not wanting to be near any viewports, not wanting to see if Cassian is still standing there or if he’s storming away, finally angry. “Get me as far away from here as you can.”

**Author's Note:**

> Some more notes here: this was originally the last chapter of the 3rd mission, which is why it's so fucking long and plot-heavy. This also was a much more major, much angstier plotline in my original draft. I made a lot of changes because in my first draft, these two assholes hadn't so much as kissed at this point. Making the series so much longer resulted in them getting closer faster, and part of my anxiety about this plotline was that it didn't make sense for Jyn to leave anymore (and the reaction to Cassian leaving on Hoth was a lot stronger than I expected, sending me into a real tailspin about Jyn leaving here). BUT I've merged two plotlines (the Jyn-leaves-for-some reason and the Draven-and-Cassian-relationship-deep-dive conflicts were two sort of separate entities in draft 1, but I've married them much more closely in the past week, and am still a mess of a person but am slightly less anxious about it now!)
> 
> I don't know if any of you needed that explanation, but I needed to give it! Thank you to anyone who's still reading this!


End file.
